XI - The Fine Art of Being Over There
XI
The Fine Art of Being Over There
“So what are we actually doing out here?” Gale asked. “Most colts would take me to dinner on the water, not to some fucking dead corn field.”
“Oh, so you are interested?” At Gale’s pointed frown, I shrugged and kept walking. “This isn’t a date.” I drew a heavy ‘X’ in the ground, and then walked a solid two dozen strides away before scratching a second mark into the rocky, poorly-tilled soil. “You’re learning to teleport.”
“What good is that gonna do against a Windigo? Last time I checked, in a blizzard, it’s cold everywhere.”
I rolled my eyes. “Gale, you’re not learning teleportation to teleport. You’re learning teleportation so you can learn magic.”
“What the Hell is that supposed—”
I held up a hoof.
“—to mean?” Gale continued, ignoring my gesture. “I know how to do magic; maybe I’m not a fancy wizard with my horn between my legs, but I can use my magic better than most unicorns. You said so yourself!”
“You can use arcana better than most unicorns,” I emphasized. “However, everything you do is a known constant. You lift things with telekinesis. You stun. And I assume you can make a shield. Maybe one or two other minor tricks. As a consequence, you aren’t surprising. Which is unfortunate, because surprise is how you win a magical duel, or a battle against a spirit like a windigo. It was the basis for Wintershimmer’s skill, and it’s how I was able to ultimately help you escape Tempest, even though he is in every measurable way a better physical fighter than I am. The Diamond Kingdom wasn’t the most powerful in the world for a thousand years because unicorns are stronger than anypony else around them. Unicorns ruled because we were smarter.”
“Racist much?”
I shrugged. “Ponies are biologically unequal, let alone comparing us to dragons. I’m not a politician, so I don’t see a reason to play pretend.”
Somewhere in the Summer Lands, I’m certain Wintershimmer was proud of me. The thought still sends a shiver down my spine.
“Regardless,” I continued, sitting down next to my more recently drawn mark and motioning Gale over to sit beside me, “my point is that since you are a unicorn, beating a windigo means you need to be smarter than it, and you need to be surprising.”
“Right…” Gale paced over toward me, and flopped down onto her haunches. “Except that teleportation is pretty much the most stereotyped, obvious trick that everypony knows unicorn wizards do.”
“And everypony uses it precisely because it’s easy to surprise somepony with. No matter how prepared you think you are for somepony to just disappear, it’s hard to deal with them suddenly being right behind you. Let alone what happens if they teleport to somewhere outside your immediate line-of-sight. Most ponies get nervous and irrational when that happens; it becomes even easier to defeat them.”
With that bit of logic, it seemed I was at least approaching some sort of headway with Gale. Her ears perked up slightly, and she stared across the fallow former corn-field, to where I’d drawn the other ‘X’. “So you’re just gonna teach me to teleport? Make me some awesome wizard? No catch?”
The shaking of my head was earnest. “No catch. I get to teach magic, which means I become a better wizard, and I get to live up to being the Archmage of the Crystal Union. You get a master who—”
“There it is. I’m not calling you ‘Master’.”
So that you can believe the rest of the words in my little record here, and so that this can be considered the pinnacle of honest autobiography, I will admit the following two nuggets of truth: first, that I genuinely hadn’t considered that point until she brought it up, and second, that my immediate next thought was Damn. As a substantially smarter-than-average stallion, however, I did not admit my disappointment to the beautiful young mare walking next to me.
Instead, I said “That’s fine.” And then, before she could call my bluff, I continued. “What matters is that you get a mentor who knows enough about magic to explain this. Deal?”
Gale stared at me for a very long time, trying to pull something out of my icy blue eyes. Either that, or she was lost in my smile; she wouldn’t be the first mare. Regardless, she eventually got around to finding whatever she was looking for, and agreed to my mentorship with a single curt nod.
“Great. Now, teleportation is not as hard as ponies claim. It’s one of the twenty-one cantrips: the fundamental spells that all other spells are built upon. I’ll admit that it isn’t the easiest cantrip to master, but it’s also far from the hardest. To begin, I want you to visualize a wine glass.”
“Okay…”
“Now, imagine the lip is around where you’re sitting, like a little circle. You can draw it in the dirt if you want, right around the outside of the ‘X’.”
Gale gave me a very funny look, but her hoof started tracing in the dirt nevertheless. I waited for her to finish and glance back at me before resuming my explanation.
“Okay. Now the destination…” I stood up and walked back to my original mark, sitting down a good few pony lengths to the side. We weren’t far enough to really need to shout, but I did raise my voice a bit. “Imagine this space here is the actual ‘bowl’ of the glass. Got it? Your origin is the opening, your destination is the bottom of the actual container. But right now, they’re separated in space. Specifically, the walls of the glass.”
“Like a wine glass?”
“Not yet. It’s just a tube right now. You’re not going to fold it in on itself and join the ends until you’ve got mana on your horn.”
“What?” Gale took several toward me. “Join the ends? Morty, have you even seen a wine glass before?”
I have to imagine you’re sharing Gale’s thoughts right about now, and the answer to her question was ‘no’. But I thought I had. To understand this principle, you need to understand Wintershimmer the Complacent’s most curious hobby. Namely, the practice of using social conditioning and parenting techniques to set up incredibly elaborate practical jokes substantially at length into my future. Well, either that, or he was actually just as evil to me as he was to everypony else in his life. To be honest, I never bothered to ask what was left of his soul.
In this particular instance, you need to understand that Wintershimmer owned a very peculiar collection of wine glasses, which he had used to train me in the fine arts of teleportation and social drinking (not as the same time, as evidenced by my continued non-dismemberment). These wine glasses were also Klein bottles; the sketch I provided with this chapter depicts one, complete with the glass stem for drinking.
The simple summary is that, like the mechanism of teleportation, a Klein bottle is a four-dimensional construct forced into three-dimensional space such that it creates a two-dimensional manifold without a definable boundary or orientation.
Yes, that really is the simple summary. And on a related topic, I excel at magic.
Without a common item to picture, however, Gale was extremely confused by my description. And, to my frustration, that confusion persisted for some time.
After a partial teleport that saw Gale halfway across the field, upside down, and with static electricity making her mane stand on end, I brought a hoof to my brow and sighed.
We argued over her understanding of folded space, and just what ‘space’ meant in the context of arcane studies. Her insistence that she wasn’t trying to get to the moon, and that there wasn’t any ‘space’ between the two ‘X’s I’d drawn made that conversation more than slightly incendiary.
On another attempt, a few hours later, she teleported herself around in a circle without leaving the ‘X’ she was standing on.
I watched the sun slide across the sky like the hour hoof on a grandfather clock for those excruciating hours, as I desperately tried to explain what I thought of as the most basic premise of magical theory. At the end of four hours, though, I’d had enough. As Gale watched, I paced over to a space well clear of the line between the two marks in the field’s soil, and started tracing another symbol.
“Oh, great,” Gale deadpanned to me, wandering over toward me. “Yeah, that’s definitely gonna help. Another target.”
“This isn’t a target.” My hoof carved a seven-pointed star in the soil, and then dragged a circle around the glyph. “Well, technically, it is a target in a metaphorical sense. But it’s not for you. Watch.”
As you can imagine, I made a show of the seance that followed. The seven points of the star ignited into sparking glory, and the little balls of magic that resembled flame traced out the lines of the symbol, before the entire shape began to glow a brilliant blue.
Wintershimmer faded into being within the circle. The body his soul chose to present was an older one, more familiar to me, though his posture was far stronger than his arthritis had ever allowed him in his living old age. He regarded Gale and I with narrow eyes, although the corners of his mouth remained firmly set, revealing neither approval nor disappointment.
Gale, for her part, watched with widened eyes. “You… you’re dead.”
“An accurate first observation,” Wintershimmer agreed. “Though also a foalish and trite one. I assume you’ve never been privy to a seance before, filly?”
Gale reacted to Wintershimmer’s harsh tone as if he had slapped her across the face; after shaking her head to disperse the last vestiges of surprise from her expression, she glared at the phantom archmage. “It’s ‘Gale’, geezer. Don’t think you can just call me ‘filly’ like I’m some—”
“I’m perfectly aware of what your name is,” Wintershimmer interrupted, emphasizing the otherwise flat comment by raising a single eyebrow. “Would you prefer I used it?” To my surprise, Gale fell immediately silent. I reminded myself that even in death, Wintershimmer knew exactly how to use his power. “Then keep your name, and any other thoughts you might have, to yourself. I need to address my pupil.”
“How do you know that Morty doesn’t—”
“Consider very carefully the question you were about to ask.” I could hear the gears of a clock ticking as Wintershimmer waited for Gale to reply.
One.
Two.
“Wise,” said Wintershimmer. Then, raising a single bushy aged brow, he nodded firmly toward her. “That is why what I spent my life practicing is called ‘magic’.”
And then, not unlike the seconds hoof on the aforementioned metaphorical clock, his head ticked to stare directly at me. “I see that you’ve upgraded the company you keep, Coil. I am curious, though, why you contact me like this. My instructions were to speak to me in River Rock, not… Lübuck, is it? I also don’t see what the filly has to add to our conversation.”
“Gale’s my… um, traveling companion?” I glanced to Gale, who shrugged by way of support. “We needed your help, Master. I’m trying to teach her—”
“Hold a moment, Coil. There is a bit of information I still need. Why are you traveling with this company when I advised you to go on your way alone?”
“She’s providing the bits we need to get passage on a boat to River Rock.”
“Hmm… yes. Reasonable. I imagine she would be useful in that regard.” The sunken eyes of my mentor looked Gale up and down. “No doubt she has other uses as well.”
Gale recoiled, repositioning herself so her flank was far from Wintershimmer’s ethereal form. “You’re a fucking pervert, old stallion!”
Wintershimmer replied with a mild snort through his nostrils. “Gale, I consider myself to be a pragmatist first, and a hedonist very nearly last. If your first thought flies to your genitals when I observe your usefulness to my pupil, I would as soon advise him to abandon you. My reason for abiding your company here is far more political in nature.”
That comment seemed odd to me, as Gale had thus far proven to be nothing but a political liability to me. However, I knew Wintershimmer well enough to know that he was not a pony who used vagueness unintentionally. Whatever it was my mentor was alluding to, he was not going to say it in front of both of us.
Even more importantly, something about the unassuming observation Wintershimmer had delivered resulted in a strange reaction from Gale. My new friend glanced worriedly in my direction, and then slunk her head down and stared off toward the horizon, cutting herself off from the conversation.
Whatever secret it was Wintershimmer had been alluding to, Gale did not want it discussed. And of the three of us in the field, I was the only pony who wasn’t in on the secret. I had my suspicions about her estrangement from some noble family of course, but I couldn’t think of anything about Gale that would make her status an asset to me. I made a mental note to dig further, and then set the thought aside.
“Wintershimmer, I summoned you to help teach Gale how to teleport.”
Wintershimmer’s eyes widened for just a moment, and then a small smile graced his lips. “I see. That request is characteristically benevolent of you, Coil.”
I nodded. “Thanks, Wintershimmer.”
“That was not intended to be a compliment.” I noticed Wintershimmer’s ghostly tail flick back and forth. “In a population of one hundred unicorns, approximately one will hold an occupation directly related to the practice of arcana. Most of these are alchemists, herbalists, street enchanters, entertainers, or apothecaries…”
I rolled my eyes, and picked up the familiar narrative. “There are around forty million unicorns alive in the world today. Thus, we expect that four hundred thousand of them possess some magical training. Of those, only forty thousand are hedge mages—” I glanced over toward Gale “—meaning they can cast at least one cantrip from each of the seven schools of magic. Hedge mages usually find work enchanting commonplace items like axes or candlesticks. Out of their number, a mere eight hundred will be proper mages: ponies who can cast all twenty-one cantrips and who make their living studying magic, breaking curses, and fighting evil spirits.
“Above the common mages, there are twelve—” I turned pointedly toward Wintershimmer and then scratched the back of my head. “Rather, there are eleven archmages in the world.”
Gale nodded. “Alright, the fact that you have all that memorized is a little crazy, but sure. What does that have to do with teleportation?”
Wintershimmer answered the question before I had a chance. “Teleportation is a cantrip, but using that magic in its raw form is dangerous. Teleport into a wall and you’ll be cut in half. A few more than half of the world’s hedge mages know that magic, and for the most part, the twenty-thousand imbeciles use it as a parlor trick. Safely teleporting, using a practice we call a reverse conjuration, is much more complicated magic. Only the eight hundred or so real mages can wield such a spell.”
Wintershimmer coughed heavily, despite his new form not requiring breath. “Now, as your own training has established, Coil, any unicorn can learn higher magic with training, regardless of the state of their horn, or the reserves of mana at their disposal.”
I took quiet notice of Gale’s curious look in my direction, and utterly failed to realize how perfectly the tables had been turned from my quandries about her past.
“So tell me, Gale, why don’t more unicorns know how to safely teleport?”
Gale shrugged. “Because nopony teaches them?”
A slow shake of his head marked Wintershimmer’s response. “On the scale of a single pony, that is true. There are no schools for mages.”
“What about Diadem’s school?”
Wintershimmer winced. I knew him well enough to tell that, rather than shock, the expression primarily stemmed from disgust. “I had hoped Star Swirl and Clover would get their little pet to stop her pet project. It appears that wasn’t the case.”
“Hey, hold on.” Gale shook her head firmly. “Diadem’s a great pony. She might be an annoying-as-fuck egghead, but she’s a super-strong wizard.”
“I chose Coil as my apprentice despite his handicap—” Gale turned to me with a raised brow as Wintershimmer continued his harsh diatribe. “—in no small part to prove to Star Swirl that a great wizard is the result of cunning, ambition, and education, rather than the quality of one’s horn. Diadem was chosen because she was born with a freakishly powerful horn, but in all my dealings with her, she proved herself to be as sharp-witted as brick wall and as ambitious as a goldfish. If she starts a school, it will serve to propagate mediocrity in a generation where Coil is already the only apprentice of any meaningful talent.”
“Damn.” Gale blinked. “Did somepony make you sit in the corner during class when you were a foal?”
“I never attended school; I studied beside Star Swirl under Archmage Comet, and even that education was flawed by class size. Wizards are meant to teach apprentices one at a time. This practice ensures that only the most talented and deserving young unicorns become mages. That culling of candidates is important. Given the choice, almost every unicorn would choose to be either a mage or live in luxury as a member of the nobility, largely dependent on their taste for conflict. However, allowing unicorns to flood en masse to those occupations would starve the populace. Ponies would die by the thousands with no food to eat and no roofs over their heads. That’s why my predecessors, the archmages of old, agreed that magical training would be restricted to a very small number of ponies who demonstrated the skill and cunning to most deserve it. They were performing a public service. That is why, although I know Coil isn’t intending something as imbecilic as to spread my teachings to the population at large, I still have to object to training you.”
The old archmagus adjusted his mane before continuing. “I admit I am curious though. Teleportation is almost exclusively a spell used in dueling. What good would that talent be to you?”
“I’m going to kill the last windigo.”
Wintershimmer was rendered momentarily speechless. His ghostly lips parted, closed, and then parted again. Finally, with a shake of his head, the old wizard seemed to find the words he needed. “You truly are Coil’s match, aren’t you? You’ve set yourself out on a mission that is both impossible and ultimately fruitless, just to develop your own glory?”
“Fuck you, geezer. I’m doing it to—”
Gale’s sentence died when Wintershimmer’s golden magic snapped around her throat. My vision went blurry and my balance surged from the sudden drain I felt in my horn. As the necromancer maintaining the seance, Wintershimmer was using my mana, even though it appeared to come from his horn. His grip took far less energy than one of my flared spells, but the drain was distracting nonetheless. By the time I regained my focus, Wintershimmer had pulled Gale to within a few inches of his ghostly face. “Your disrespect is no longer amusing to me, filly.” Despite not being able to step outside my septagram, the ghost of my mentor leaned forward, hauling Gale upward by her neck until her hind legs dangled shoulder-height above the ground. “Perhaps befriending Coil will finally begin to heal the untold damage your forebearers have done to the study of magic, but understand this: I will not lose my legacy on an idiotic quest with no hope of success. If Coil tolerates your presence, you would be wiser helping him to kill Clover the Cruel.”
Despite being choked, Gale’s eyes widened at Wintershimmer’s words. Though I did honestly want to help Gale, logic told me that Wintershimmer had no intention of strangling her; he was only making a point. Despite that knowledge, I chose to end his efforts prematurely, so that I could have his undivided attention.
I saw Gale’s body began to shake as she struggled for breath, and after a quick glance to aim, I surged magic through my horn. The ‘spell’, for any unicorns reading, did nothing save to flush my horn with magic. In death, tapped into my natural strength, Wintershimmer’s raw power was greater than it had been in life, but that meant little when my flare of raw power disrupted his access to my mana.
Brute force means next-to-nothing when comparing the strength of trained mages, but to Gale, it meant the world. As she collapsed from the loss of a grip holding up her neck, I turned back to Wintershimmer. Fatigue swept through my body like icy water, but my mind was already beyond that concern; talking to Wintershimmer wasn’t something that usually required me to cast a considerable number of spells.
Gale coughed and wheezed and then looked up.
“You want us to assassinate Clover the Clever?”
Wintershimmer’s scowl-creased lips tilted upward at their corners. “How pragmatic of you, Gale. I assume Coil would prefer to challenge her to a duel to the death, face-to-face. You might yet teach him something useful.”
“Why—” Gale’s hoarse gasp ceased in the face of a desperate gasp for air. “Why the hell would you want us to kill Clover?”
“She slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent ponies,” Wintershimmer replied in a distinctly disinterested, matter-of-fact tone. “In an act of pure ambition and spite, she destroyed the Diamond Kingdom—and don’t dare doubt for a moment that she did more harm to our race than Cyclone ever could have. But, perhaps most importantly, it is because I have reason to believe she will do worse than this again.” The ghost of the archmage rolled his shoulders and neck, preparing to no doubt offer the full story of his plans. His words never escaped his mind. Any chance of a continued lecture was overridden by a harsher, stonier voice from over my shoulder.
“Master Coil! Master Wintershimmer! Unknown mare! Oh, I’m so glad to have found you!”
I whirled in place, verifying with my eyes exactly what my ears had heard. “Angel?”
“In the stone, Master Coil, and oh, it is so good to be back against company that has greater respect for my body. I dare say Silhouette has dinged my halos in more places than I am comfortable considering. Fortunately, as you mentioned when last we—”
“Shut up, Angel.” My demand was granted immediately, and I lifted a hoof to my brow in hopes of somehow comforting the headache building there. “Gale, this is my golem, Guardian Angel. Angel, meet Gale.” I gave the two no chance to greet one another. “You said Silhouette is here; is she here here? About to come running out of the corn or something?”
Wintershimmer released an amused snort. “Bold—she’s followed you onto Equestrian soil?”
“Yes, Master Wintershimmer. No, Master Coil, she isn’t here. Merely in Lübuck. She said she was going to visit one of your friends—”
Gale and I immediately glanced toward one another. “Graargh,” she told me, and then glanced back toward Angel. “Is this ‘Silhouette’ pony dangerous?”
Wintershimmer chuckled. “Coil could kill her with a single spell; simply hurling her upward with his full strength and letting gravity do the work would probably be the most efficient approach. For the record, he ought to.”
“I’m not interested in just murdering her.” It took a hoof rubbed at the middle of my brow to take my mind off of a growing irritation with Wintershimmer, and to focus on the task at hoof. “She’s probably going to try and hold him hostage. She wants me to go back to the Crystal Union and face execution.”
Gale scoffed. “Execution? For what?”
“Killing me,” Wintershimmer concluded with contextually appropriate finality. “Since you seem troubled, Gale, allow me to simply state that Coil was the cause of my death, but not over anything so dramatic as murder. I’m certain my student can explain it to you later. Now, however, I should warn you. Coil, Silhouette is tempting you into a trap.”
“I figured that much out already, Master.”
“And yet you still traveled with the tiny lycanthrope, despite my warnings?” Yellowed, transparent eyes narrowed. “Silhouette will not harm the creature. Whatever he is, he appears to be a non-crystal earth pony colt. And, more importantly, as far as anypony knows, he is an Equestrian citizen. In contrast, she is an officer of the Crystal Union’s military, performing a foalnapping on foreign soil. The Equestrian pegasi will destroy her, and if we have any luck, Jade’s paranoia and her vendetta with Hurricane and Platinum will lead to a war that destroys the Union.”
Gale gasped, her eyes widened. “You want a war?”
“Only as a means to greater political stability,” Wintershimmer answered calmly. “Given your unique position, you might do well to understand this. Jade, like Warlord Halite whom I served before her, is a powder keg. It would take only a spark to send her back into insanity, waging war with more reasonable pony civilizations. Now that I am no longer present to control her—or extinguish her, if need be—there is nothing stopping the mare’s next idle whim of fury from costing thousands of lives. Better to cut her down now on Equestria’s terms, with minimal bloodshed.”
Gale scowled, and her horn ignited. Wintershimmer only lifted a brow as she drew Procellarum. “I’m gonna go stop a war, then. Even if that does mean walking into a trap and not asking for help from the guards. Morty, come with me, unless you honestly think this asshole has a point.”
For a moment, I hesitated, glancing back and forth between Wintershimmer’s ghost and Gale, who had turned and started to sprint toward the walls of Lübuck proper.
“Go with her,” Wintershimmer grumbled.
“What?” I turned back to the old stallion. “You just said—”
“Jade’s downfall is inevitable. Clover’s is much less so; unlike Jade, she is troublingly sane. If stopping Silhouette from starting a war between Equestria and the Union is what it takes for you to get to River Rock more safely and more swiftly, then that is a trade we are wise to make. This also gives you an opportunity to kill Silhouette and spare yourself her continued pursuit.”
“I’m not going to kill her, Wintershimmer. She might be corrupt and, well, an awful pony. But she thinks I really am some murderer. She has every reason to be chasing me. You should know; it’s your fault.”
“I am perfectly aware.” Wintershimmer spared a moment to sigh. “Throughout your training, Coil, I’ve endeavored to teach you why I went to so much effort to be portrayed as callous, uncaring, and even evil. That perception gives me power, and it liberates me. You’ve chosen the role of a foalish storybook hero. I was hoping this lesson would teach you the value of pragmaticism, but if you truly would rather play the hero, at least now it serves you some purpose.”
“Wait, what purpose?”
“That mare you’ve stumbled onto is a truly unique asset to you. Live up to your image with her. Keep her close. Express disgust with me, if need be. My reputation makes me a convenient villain to oppose, and I won’t hold such comments against you in private. Whatever you do, win her over. It will serve you well to have the—”
“Don’t tell me.”
Wintershimmer raised a brow. “Ignorance is the most refined form of weakness.”
“Not when I choose it deliberately.” Wintershimmer’s ghostly brow rose in intrigue, and I sensed the slightest hint of approval in his expression. I swallowed heavily. “Whatever it is Gale’s going so far out of her way to keep secret from me—even if it seems like everypony else in the world knows—is her business.”
A scoff slipped past Wintershimmer’s ghostly lips. “Idealism.”
I shrugged. “It also means that when I treat her exactly like the pony she’s pretending to be, I’m being honest. And, apparently, she prefers that treatment.”
Wintershimmer’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and he drew in a single unnecessary breath. For just a sliver of a moment, I dared wonder if I was actually seeing unbridled pride in his expression. “You’ve grown, Coil. I’ll trust your judgement in this. Seance me again when you can, and I will explain the entirety of my claims about Clover.” The old mage drew in a breath (despite not technically needing to breathe) and cocked his head toward where Gale had nearly disappeared into the surrounding corn and wheat.
I dismissed the seance holding Wintershimmer in place without answering his final orders. As I broke off into a gallop, ears pinned back in the wind, squinting to keep track of Gale’s path, I felt fear. In some part, it was the fear of wondering what I would do if I beat Silhouette. For all the years that he had raised me I often disagreed with Wintershimmer’s morals, but his ruthless logic and uncanny ability to read other ponies both had an uncomfortable habit of proving correct.
Worse, though, was the fear that we wouldn’t be able to beat Silhouette. Gale had her magic sword and considerable agility, but that wouldn’t count for much unless Silhouette really had come alone. Still, she was more useful than I could hope to be.
I had already cast two spells.
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imgs.xkcd.com/comics/parental_trolling.png
Here is a simpler one:
"Glue two Möbius strips together into a tube"
7404632
Glue? What are you, some kind of carnivorous barbarian pegasus? Besides, Gale would have no idea what a Möbius...
... there are those two dots again. Those damnable dots.
I don't understand the 'I already cast two spells' part.
7405645
From Ch. 1.
Morty used one of his spells for that day seancing Wintershimmer, and another breaking Wintershimmer's grip on Gale. Thus, the next time he casts a spell, he'll pass out from exhaustion.
7405752 Ahhhhhh.....Forgot about that.
Wintershimmer really is such an ass.
As a brick wall, I suspect.
Does anyone else read Wintershimmer in the voice of Davros?